Rabbi Mati Kirschenbaum

In this week’s Torah portion, Beshalach, we read the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1-18), a poem which was sung by the Israelites after they had crossed the Sea of Reed. Immediately afterwards, we read the following verse: [perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]‘Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a […]

In this week’s Torah portion, parashat Bo, we read about the death of the Egyptian first-borns, which results from Pharaoh’s unwillingness to let the Israelites go. When I read these verses, I can not even fathom the horror that every Egyptian family must have felt after they had woken up in the morning only to […]

This week’s parasha, Vaera, deals with one of the most spectacular displays of divine power in the entire Hebrew Bible – with the ten plagues of Egypt. We can only marvel at the scope of divine intervention, which involves a wide variety of animals and (super)natural phenomena unleashed on the people of Egypt. Our focus […]

Every immigrant would agree that first years abroad are extremely difficult, as one needs to get settled into a new reality. The challenge of these initial years prevents many people from moving to more affluent countries. However, the challenge is even bigger when one never wanted to leave his homeland; when one was forced to […]

You may say that I am a dreamer and I am the only good one – if Yosef wrote the lyrics of John Lennon’s famous song ‘Imagine’, this is how they would have sounded. In this week’s parasha, we get to know Yosef as a dream interpreter par excellence. He is blessed with two talents: […]

A few days ago I participated in a leadership seminar for young diaspora Jews studying in Israel. I shared my hotel room with a young French Jew who considered making aliyah after completing his programme. When he found out that I am a rabbinical student and that I write weekly drashot (sermons) on current Torah […]